Chattogram Divisional Special Judge Court has fixed June 20 to hear arguments against former Officer-in-charge (OC) of Teknaf police station and death row convict Pradeep Kumar Das and his wife Chumki Karan in a graft case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on Sunday noon.
Judge Munshi Abdul Majid gave out the order. Pradeep and his wife Chumki were present in the courtroom during the order.
The lawyers of the accused Sameer Dasgupta and Ratan Chakrobarti said that the court has heard testimonies from two witnesses, Chairman of Boalkhali upazila’s Saroatoli union Belal Hossain and Member of ward no 9 of the same union Abdul Jalil, and fixed the date for further arguments today.
According to court sources, the court proceedings of the graft case started on December 15, 2021 through framing of charges. The accused then applied to the High Court (HC) seeking acquittal from the case, which was rejected by the HC.
The graft case was lodged by the Assistant Director of ACC’s Chattogram-2 office Md Riaz Uddin on August 23, 2020. The ACC filed a charge sheet to a Chattogram court on July 26, 2021, which was accepted by the court on September 1, 2021.
Pradeep and Chumki surrendered before the court on May 23, 2022.
According to the chargesheet, Pradeep built a six-storey house in Chattogram city’s Pathorghata area in his father-in-law’s name to conceal money earned illegally. Later, Pradeep’s father-in-law donated the building to his daughter Chumki.
Though there are documents of this handover, the building is currently owned by Pradeep and Chumki.
The chargesheet also says that the commission business and the fish-farming business that Chumki had shown in her income tax return documents were fakes. The ACC haven’t found any existence of these businesses during their investigations.
The fake documents show the ways in which Chumki has helped Pradeep to conceal the latter’s ill-gotten money.
The charge sheet provides a list of assets owned by Pradeep and Chumki, including a six-storey house, another house in the city’s Sholashohor area, 45 bhori gold ornaments, two cars and an apartment in Cox’s Bazar.
Source: United News of Bangladesh